John Kerry: “if I may point out to my colleague even further, this is another chart which shows that more working families-- working…”

“if I may point out to my colleague even further, this is another chart which shows that more working families-- working families in America, we are not talking about the poor that are so quickly bashed here in Washington today who are on welfare; the poor who are not even on welfare and do not qualify and are not working; these are working Americans--Americans who are out there paying their taxes, struggling to make it. And what is happening? In 1975, only about 8.2 or 8.3 percent of Americans who were working families qualified as poor in America. Dramatically, beginning in 1979, that went up to about 11.4 percent. We can see the incredible increase when we went through that very dramatic period of raising the defense spending, cutting the taxes, and increasing the deficit. It started down marginally for 3 years, between 1982 to 1985. Now it is going back up, and it is higher than it was in 1980. It is now at the highest level it has been in years, that is--the number of working Americans who are poor. What is also interesting is back in 1960, 1970, 1980, the minimum wage could lift those folks out of poverty. The minimum wage, 100 percent value of the minimum wage between 1960 and 1980, if a person were earning just the minimum wage they could be lifted out of poverty. But that is no longer the case. The trend line has been straight down since 1980, so that now, in 1995, the minimum wage will only bring a person up to a 70 percent level of the poverty line.…”